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Aviation History
1953
1953 - 1010.PDF
164 FLIGHT LONG TREK TWO . . . bearing trams and buses and big American cars, and flanked by some fine modern buildings. But the Kiwis were glad to see it behind them as they took off next morning, heading south fosf Juba and Entebbe. The hop to Juba was the biggest single leg on the whole trip-y- 740 miles—and perhaps the most unpleasant. Across their track lay the intertropical front, where the different air masses of the two hemispheres meet with tremendous violence in a globe- encircling belt of cloud and storms. Huge thunderheads reach ten miles up into the sky; vast cloud layers stretch for hundreds of miles on either side; and, beneath, the earth is torn by lightning, whirling dust storms, or drenching rains. It is this front, moving with the seasons from the tropics of Cancer to that of Capricorn, that is responsible for the equatorial rain forests and lush vegeta tion of the tropics. All the pilots got through safely to Juba, although some were forced to fly over 450 miles in formation in cloud, with their aircraft iced up (putting half their blind-flying instruments out of action) and relying for navigation on bearings passed to them by a friendly Comet on its way to Capetown. When they broke cloud, beneath them lay the green equatorial forests—a welcome change from the desert of the north—with their companion, the Nile, pointing the way to Juba airstrip, hacked out of the jungle on its banks. Juba, the administrative centre of southern Sudan, is at the southern extremity of the navigable Nile. Upstream from the town, rapids bar further progress to the paddle steamers and dhows that carry supplies and merchandise along the river from Cairo to Juba. The river is the only reliable, year-round link with Khartoum and the thousands of gallons of kerosine used by the jets refuelling there had to be brought up-river in four- gallon tins on board barges. The single narrow strip, barely long enough for jet operations, lies amid big-game country. A few miles to the north feed the biggest herd of elephants in the world—8,000 strong—and from Juba comes most of the ivory used by the native carvers of Omdurman and Khartoum. Sometimes the big-game animals— lions, elephants, rhinos and hippos—stray on the strip itself and have to be " shooed " off before the aircraft can land. From Juba to Entebbe, on the banks of the mighty Lake Vic toria, is only 335 miles, and the Vampires made it over the lakes, marshes and rising ground in under one hour. This vast inland lake, almost 4,000ft up, is the second biggest in the world and from it stems the White Nile which, flowing past Juba, joins the Blue Nile from Abyssinia at Khartoum. Across its northern shores runs the equator, while the borders of Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya meet in its waters near the eastern shore. The airfield of Entebbe is a fine strip built on a peninsula jutting into the lake, and is the staging post for airliners branching east, west and south into British East Africa, Belgian Congo and South Africa. Through the airport buildings pass passengers from the Comets, which refuel on their way to Capetown. It was here that F/L. Rabone's party were stationed and where the natives got to know the Vampire as " toto Comet " (litde Comet). The jet age is a commonplace reality in Uganda! The weather favourably surprised the Kiwis. Pleasantly warm, it was hardly the climate they had expected to find in a place only three miles north of the equator. The two parties that pushed farther east to Kenya were even more surprised. Nairobi, the capital of Kenya Colony, is 5,500ft up in the East African highlands, while only 60 miles to the north stands snow- clad Mt. Kenya, 17,000ft high. Here the party under S/L. Hope stayed, amid scenery that could have been New Zealand's Cam bridge or Hawks Bay: green, rolling pastures and grasslands were dotted with poplars and African shade trees; cattle grazed peace fully like any New Zealand dairy herd, and only the coal-black herdsmen seemed out of place. The climate was a distinct shock to the New Zealanders, who found they were totally unprepared to face nights cold enough to call for a jersey or coat, and mornings of summer showers and rain. Only at Dar-es-Salaam, on the east coast of the continent, did the Kiwis strike the type of climate they had expected of equa torial Africa. Here the party under F/O. Hume found waving palms; white coral sand, with the long swell of the Indian Ocean breaking on the beaches; steaming mangrove swamps; and lush green jungle. The air was heavy with moisture and the winds warm, but the temperature was still nowhere near as high as at Khartoum or even at Juba. Dar is in the protectorate of Tanganyika to the south of Kenya and the Vampires flew a route over some of the richest big-game country in the world. Their track brought them close to the famous Mt. Kilimanjaro, soaring over 19,000ft above the con tinent and where up until recent years the frozen carcase of a leopard could be seen high on the slopes, just as Ernest Heming way has recorded. Dar-es-Salaam is soon to become one of the big ports of the east coast of Africa, for, like Mombasa in Kenya, it is being developed to handle uranium mined inland in the Belgian Congo. At the moment, however, it is still a fairly small, happy little port, where ships lie offshore and cargo is conveyed to them by lighters, and the people are content to do next week what they could do today. The jet boys received a marvellous welcome when they arrived on May 31st, and found themselves something of "a seven days' wonder" until their departure on June 5th. The Vampires were the first jets ever to land at Dar-es-Salaam and practically the whole of the white and coloured population of the port were out at the airfield when they arrived; the natives were still there when they left. The latter would come down in their hordes in the morning and remain all day, cheering and clapping whenever the " steel birds of Europe ", as they called them, took the air. The jets flew every day, doing aerobatics and formation demonstrations over Dar itself, the island of Zanzibar, and various towns up and down the coast. The flying culmination of their five-day stay was on June 2nd, when they did a formation fly-past over the Corona tion parade in the town and aerobatics over Dar-es-Salaam and Zanzibar. At the same time on the same day the other two flights were performing in Kenya and Uganda. Over Nairobi the " formation four " aerobatic team of S/L. Hope, which had arrived on May 27th, were doing low runs over the parade in various display formations. Low cloud on this day had forced them to abandon the formation aerobatics for : (Be/ow) The formation aerobatic team led by S/L Hope prepares for take-off. (below, right) At Dar-es-Salaam refuelling was from 44-gallon drums; the turn-round usually took about 30 minutes, the natives making hard work of the pumping. (Above) Vampires circle Kilimanjaro.
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